Piston rail ring installers and methods are generally known. In such installers and methods, a piston ring is installed on a vehicle piston. In one arrangement, the piston ring is provided as a thin piston ring and a pair of such thin piston rings are applied to a piston in flanking positions relative to a spacer ring and together the thin piston rings and the spacer ring comprise an oil ring set on the piston. Conventionally, the spacer ring is first assembled into the piston ring groove and then each side rail ring is assembled into each groove portion formed between the spacer ring and respective groove surfaces of the piston. Example piston ring installers and methods are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,259,109 and 5,303,465, both incorporated herein in their entireties.
Such piston rail rings can be difficult to install using conventional installers and methods due to the thickness of the rail rings and/or inside surface coatings applied to the rail rings. For example, the rail rings are typically very thin (e.g., 0.4 mm), which can cause the rings to twist or bend when expanded by ring magazines on which the rail rings are disposed. This can make it difficult to index rings off the top of the ring magazine tube and into the piston groove of the piston. Further, some rings also have a coating on the inside diameter surface of the rings, which can cause the rings to stick together when indexing.